30 Years of Hard Falls for Olga Korbut, After the Gold and Glory

By JERE LONGMAN

Published: February 10, 2002

NORCROSS, Ga., Feb. 8—
There was a time when Olga Korbut could not have bought a meal if she had tried. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, she won three gold medals in gymnastics, and more engagingly, at 17, she put an expressive face on the grim athletic visage of Communism.

She cried when she stumbled in the all-around competition and exulted when she took first place in the balance beam and the floor exercise. She also won a gold in the team competition. The world had never seen such emotion from a Soviet athlete. People adored her. Shop owners opened their stores to her. Her money was no good.

''We had the impression that every athlete from the Soviet Union was an unemotional machine,'' said the gymnast Bart Conner, who won two gold medals for the United States at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. ''Then she came along, this vulnerable little girl. Everyone wanted to hug her.''

While she was a contortionist in the air, her personal landing has been hard.

On Jan. 31, Ms. Korbut, 46, was accused of shoplifting $19.35 worth of figs, seasoning, tea, cheese and syrup from a supermarket here, near her townhouse northeast of Atlanta. The Secret Service announced this week that it was investigating $30,000 in counterfeit $100 bills found in an abandoned house that she once owned in nearby Duluth, Ga., and whose last occupant apparently was her son. No one has been charged.

Ms. Korbut has said she simply forgot her wallet in the car and planned to return to pay for the groceries. Through her agent, she denied any connection to the counterfeit bills found in a house she no longer owns or lives in. But whether the supermarket incident, in which she is accused of concealing groceries in her purse, was a misunderstanding or not, it underscored the troubled, melancholy life Ms. Korbut has led since her Olympic glory.

Though she made gymnastics a vital sport in the Summer Games, the Soviet system that promised to care for her for life disintegrated. While she was widely embraced in the United States, where she has lived since 1991, Ms. Korbut never developed the public relations skills to capitalize on her achievements.

Fame overwhelmed her almost immediately, she has said. Her teenage success was never matched with a successful coaching career. She has gone from gym to gym; plans for her own gymnasium never materialized. Along the way, she has struggled with her family relationships and her health. David Day, who owns the Gym Elite here, said he severed his coaching ties with Ms. Korbut because of her excessive drinking.

While Ms. Korbut still teaches four one-hour gymnastic classes a week in nearby Dunwoody, it is not in a high-profile gym but in affiliation with a storefront martial arts center.

''It's unfortunate,'' said Robert Colarossi, president of USA Gymnastics, the sport's national governing body. ''She was the first true star of the modern era.''

Neither Ms. Korbut nor her Atlanta lawyer, Howard J. Weintraub, returned phone calls seeking comment. At her home in Norcross, one of a group of modest brick townhouses tucked behind a hotel off the interstate, Ms. Korbut's husband, Alex Voinich, politely declined to answer questions and said his wife was not available for an interview.

Her manager, Kay Weatherford, said that Ms. Korbut had been caught up in an ''absurd misunderstanding'' and that she felt her reputation was being unfairly maligned.

''Her heart is hurting,'' Ms. Weatherford said.

Ms. Korbut has not lived in the Duluth home since she was divorced in 2000, Ms. Weatherford said. Records indicate that Ms. Korbut and her former husband, Leonid Bortkevich, bought the brick Colonial for $160,000 in 1993 and that the house was sold in September 2000. A month later, Mr. Bortkevich took out a $240,000 refinancing loan on the house, and by July 2001, he was listed as the sole owner.

Ms. Korbut married Mr. Voinich, and Mr. Bortkevich is believed to have returned to his native Belarus. The last occupant of the house apparently was Ms. Korbut's 22-year-old son, Richard Bortkevich, according to neighbors and to the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department.

''She had nothing to do with this,'' Ms. Weatherford said.

The bogus money was discovered on Dec. 5, when Sheriff's Deputy Tracy Lee arrived at the house to serve an eviction notice. He said he found a bag of counterfeit $100 bills and several computers. The house had been trashed, he said. Light fixtures had been removed, banisters had been unhinged from the stairs. A large oil painting of Ms. Korbut ended up on the curb until it was rescued by a neighbor, Deputy Lee said.

''Whoever was living here was angry because the house was being taken over by a mortgage company,'' the deputy said.

The house is in an upscale neighborhood. Adorned with columns and furnished with a pool, it once appeared to symbolize the genteel success of an important career.

''I think she's had a very troubled life,'' said Paul Ziert, publisher of International Gymnast magazine. ''To me, it all basically stems from the mentality of athletes who came out of the former Soviet Union. They worked so hard when they were young with aspirations that, when they made it, life would be taken care of. Here, there's no free lunch.''

Few gymnasts become wealthy in the United States. Most of the financial opportunities occur in the Olympic years. ''Opening malls and waving in parades is not a life,'' Mr. Conner said. His own wife, Nadia Comaneci, the former Romanian star, had to come to this realization before making a successful transition to corporate spokeswoman, gym owner and television commentator.

A sense of regal accomplishment, bitterness and betrayal, is evident on Ms. Korbut's official Web site, which calls her ''the most popular and beloved gymnast who has ever graced the sport.'' It says other gymnasts have taken credit for maneuvers she invented and that ''many of the moves were renamed and accredited to the current gymnastic flavor of the month.''

Those sympathetic to Ms. Korbut say that many athletes would have become disoriented by the instant, mushrooming fame that she experienced. Buses stopped and riders climbed out to ask for her autograph in Munich, and when the attention became too great, she hid under a hat and a wig, according to David Wallechinsky's ''The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics.'' Upon returning to her home in Grodno, Belarus, she received so many letters that a clerk was assigned to her mail.

''One day, I was nobody and the next day, I was a star,'' Ms. Korbut wrote in her 1992 autobiography, ''My Story.'' ''It was almost more than I could take in.''

She toured to sold-out performances a year after Munich, and moved to New Jersey in 1991, expressing concern about fatigue and thyroid problems. She had been living in Minsk, 180 miles northwest of Chernobyl, when the nuclear reactor exploded five years earlier and sent a radioactive cloud over Belarus. Concerned about the health effects on children, she began the Olga Korbut Foundation with the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Although testing indicated that she would not need treatment, a hospital representative said at the time, Ms. Korbut has continued to experience thyroid dysfunction, her Web site said.

It was in 1991 also that she first saw a replay of ABC's coverage of her Olympic performance. Finally, she said, she understood why Americans had adored her.

But that adoration did not bring enduring fulfillment. Mr. Day, who severed his coaching relationship with Ms. Korbut five years ago, said he confronted her about her drinking and that ''I honestly believe she's gotten over it.'' Ms. Weatherford said that, in the two years she has managed Ms. Korbut, ''I've never seen her take a drink.''

Ms. Korbut's name still carries cachet. For the last several years, Mr. Day has held a competition called the ''Olga Korbut Classic,'' paying her to appear.

''I sensed she was getting it all together,'' he said. ''This is shocking to me.''

Photos: Olga Korbut autographed a car in Doraville, Ga., in November. At age 17 in 1972, she won three Olympic gold medals and the hearts of spectators by putting expression into the grim athletic face of Communism. (Photographs by Associated Press)